SPY x FAMILY CODE: White

Meet the Forgers. The patriarch of the family is Lloyd Forger, a renowned psychologist and the cover identity for Twilight, a spy working undercover as a family man to infiltrate the inner circle of a consequential politician. His fake wife is Yor Forger, a civil servant by day and a deadly assassin by night. Their adopted daughter is Anya Forger, a bright and free-spirited mind reader. Their beloved pet is Bond, a giant white fluff-ball of a dog who occasionally receives glimpses of the future. Despite all of this chaos, these four duplicitous individuals somehow manage to form a functional, wholesome family unit, even though they can only remain a family as long as Lloyd’s mission is active... And as it turns out, with upper management breathing down his neck, he’s going to have to achieve some fast results to keep it from being reassigned to another agent. With a dwindling list of options before them, The Forgers concoct a desperate plan to stay in the game, which will see them being pulled deeper and deeper into the most absurd, and deadly, circumstances they’ve ever had to face.

This is definitely a record for me. Four Spy x Family reviews, in a row, and somehow I was able to reach my usual length in the first three without having to resort to another one short, informal stream of consciousness review on any of them... But I will have to break that streak, because for this fourth entry, I have nothing special to say about the production details. The visual style, animation and English dub are basically the same as they were in all three previous entries, with the one and only conceit being that all three elements are performing at the high end of what you’ve already seen or heard. The English dub is as good as it’s always been, the animation and over-all visuals are as good as they’ve ever been, and I have no complaints about any of that. The only details worthy of being highlighted are the beautiful environmental effects, an exciting lightning-fast-paced battle that Yor has towards the end, and oh my God, they go insane with Anya’s facial expressions this time around.

All that aside, I’d like to spend this review discussing some of the finer points of the writing, because if there’s one thing this movie has that the series sometimes struggles with, it’s that it features an extremely well written and tightly constructed plot. Before I get to that, though, since I mentioned the word plot, I should probably address a couple of points I made in my review of season 2. Towards the end of that piece, I mentioned that the season in question had been neglectful of the overall plot, but that wasn’t such a bad thing because I couldn’t imagine anyone caring that much about it... And I definitely wasn’t expecting the movie to throw both of those points right back in my face like it did. First off, I’m pretty sure Lloyd’s lack of progress in his mission was intentional, because it figured directly into the plot of this movie, more on that in a minute. More importantly, I’ve had to eat my words a little bit about there being no emotional investment in the plot, and people not caring about it very much, because hot damn, this movie finds ways to make you care.

Now, when a long running series releases its own movie, there are certain tropes you can expect to see. First off, and this is pretty much inescapable, there’s gonna be a vacation/road trip. This cliche is more common in western animation, but it has happened in some anime, like the first Cardcaptor Sakura movie, and now the Spy x Family movie. This can work. It can work really well, even if it’s so common that it can be a little annoying when you can’t stop seeing it. What’s more frustrating is that in order to separate itself from the series proper, the movie will be a completely standalone affair, bringing in new characters that you’ll never see again, and giving you a story that’s a complete plot cul-de-sac, with no real stakes or consequences(even if it tells you otherwise) and ultimately not mattering to the over-all series so people who only watch the series don’t have to miss anything important. I can’t tell if the Spy x Family movie does this, and I won’t until season 3 comes out, but what I can say is that it features a much stronger plot than any other series-based animated movie I’ve seen.

I said before that Spy x Family makes you care about the plot, but how does it do that? To answer this question, let’s take a look at a very different movie, the Disney and Pixar film Wall-E. You may remember Wall-E as the adorable silent film about the last robot on Earth falling in love with a futuristic robot from outer space. What you may not remember(and who could blame you) is the state of humanity in that film... Amorphous humanoid blobs sitting on hover chairs, staring at screens all day, and drinking smoothies made out of recycled human remains. On some level, you knew they needed to go back to Earth and put the effort into rebuilding their home. But did you really care? No. I hate to sound cynical, but post-apocalyptic scenarios being used as a metaphor for the more dire aspects of modern humanity were a dime a dozen even then, so those human blobs could stay in space for all I cared. That is, until Wall-E got crushed, and the only way to save him was to return to Earth for replacement parts. And hey, humanity gets to rebuild, why the fuck not. All of a sudden, going to Earth was the most important fucking thing the movie could do, not because I cared about humanity, but because I cared about the little robot.

That is how you make the audience care about a plot... You give that plot consequences that feel personal to them. For most of the first three seasons of Spy x Family, the overall plot just kinda lingers in the background, occasionally becoming relevant, but never feeling as important to the viewer or integral to the series as the Forger family itself does. It probably wouldn’t feel important to us if Lloyd just decided out of the blue to start taking his mission more seriously, or if his boss just happened to put her foot down out of nowhere, so the plot comes up with a clever new twist... A higher up in the agency is using Lloyd’s inactivity to try and force an ally of his into the role, thus acting as an outside force to place an immediate threat upon the Forger family. Not only do we not want to see them break up, but the implication of bullshit nepotism also adds a layer of unfairness on top of it all. This gets us behind whatever hair-brained scheme the family decides to pursue right off the bat. That tactic of unfairness is also played a second time when the movie’s villain is introduced through an act of abuse of power, stealing the dessert from the Forgers that their plan had hinged on, cleverly making you hate him right from the start.

You normally wouldn’t care about the random and/or interchangeable mcguffin that the villains are trying to transport, at least not until Anya accidentally eats it and her life is suddenly on the line, with the villains threatening to gut her like a fish to get it back. Lloyd and Yor battling these villains for the sake of their country wouldn’t hit home nearly as hard as when the only thing they’re really trying to save is Anya, and yet the greater political plot gives these villains a reason to exist that doesn’t feel forced. The entire movie basically works this way, justifying every twist of the plot in some clever way that relates directly to the main cast, making you feel invested in every single absurd direction that it goes in, and at no point does anyone we’re familiar with ever feel out of character. Speaking of characters, this movie also doesn’t fall into the trap of forcing new characters into the story that you’ll never hear about again(except the villains of course) so you don’t have that annoying cliche of our heroes being dragged into someone else’s story. I would honestly say that in terms of franchise movie cliches, Code White knows exactly which ones to utilize(and how) as well as which ones to avoid.

There are a couple of elements that do feel kind of arbitrary... One of the lesser antagonists has this superstition gimmick that could have easily been left out... And I don’t think they necessarily needed to retread Yor’s insecurities about her position in the forger family, but I didn’t hate it. The way it’s used is funny overall, and she does reach a pretty nice and refreshingly efficient resolution over it. Neither of these elements really takes anything away from the movie, which is important here, because aside from just those two things, I love everything about this movie. It’s funny, it’s exciting, it’s well paced and it’s tightly written, and it’s the perfect showcase for these three lovable characters(And Bond, to a slightly lesser extent) that we’ve come to care so much about over the last few seasons. I’ve already watched it twice in the last week, and I’m going to watch it a third time soon.

I give Spy x Family: Code White a 10/10